


By What Right

by WinterRose527



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: In Universe, Post-S7, anti-dany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 01:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17840213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterRose527/pseuds/WinterRose527
Summary: Posted this little one-shot on Tumblr and I wanted to post it here. Inspired with the rumors that Robin Arryn will come to Winterfell in S8.





	By What Right

“No,” he all but growled.

 

It was the first time they had been alone in what felt like days. The Northern Lords did not trust the Dothraki, and thus Sansa was never on her own these days. And Daenerys, for all the lovestruck gazes she sent Jon’s way, did not seem to trust him enough to leave him on his own either.

 

So it was that the person she had once spent long evenings with by the fire as she mended his shirts and he talked through one kingly matter or another, the one she had missed with an ache each day he was in the south, had become someone she saw merely in passing as she attended to her duties as the Lady of Winterfell and he attended to his Queen and prepared for the battle to come.

 

And now, the only moment she had with him was marred be his anger.

 

Anger had always been like wildfire between them, catching them and engulfing them as one.

 

“No?,” she scoffed at him. “By what right do you think you can tell me no in this matter? In any matter? You gave up that right when you gave up our home!”

 

“And there it is,” he said, almost like he was relieved though the pain in his eyes assured her he was not.

 

“Yes! Yes _there_ it is,” she pressed on, because his pain was no match for her own. “As my King you had the right to tell me no in such matters, in _any_ matter, but you are no longer my King are you? And you are not the Lord of Winterfell either. I am its Lady and as such this is my decision.”

 

“Sansa,” Jon breathed out and it almost broke he resolve. He hung his head and when he looked back up at him there was fire in his eyes, “Not him.”

 

“Robin is the Lord of the Vale, and with Littlefinger gone it is important that we keep the Vale in the fold,” she explained. “Or do you forget that it was his knights that won the Battle of the Bastards? They came for me, they fought for me, and when I executed their Lord in all but name they stood at my side. They did not stay my hand, they agreed he had to die for his sins against my family.”

 

Jon looked at her in horror, “Your family.”

 

She swallowed down the lump in her throat and shook her head, “You’re not a Stark, you said so yourself.”

 

“Aye and it was you who said that I was!,” he raged at her. If it were any other man she would be afraid that he would strike her. But Jon was still Jon. He backed away from her, “Was that just you biding your time, _keeping me in the fold_ , while I was your best chance of survival?”

 

“Is that really what you think of me?,” she raged back. “You were a Stark! You were one of us and then you went south and returned with a foreign Queen as your sweetheart. You betrayed your people! You betrayed your home!”

 

“Say it,” he demanded.

 

“You betrayed me,” she all but whispered.

 

He crossed back to her then and she wasn’t sure how it happened but she was up against the wall. His eyes were crazed, they were not her father’s eyes any longer, they were Targaryen eyes.

 

In this moment there was almost nothing of the her Aunt Lyanna in him, even if he was her son. He was Rhaegar’s, the last of the dragons.

 

“Everything I did, I did for you,” he said, his voice low, “I thought of no one but you. How to keep you safe, how to return to you.”

 

“A-and Arya and Bran,” she reminded him, because he was so very close that their breath was intermingling.

 

He straightened up and released her, “Of course.”

 

She blinked and there were tears on her eyelashes as she urged her heart to return to its steady beat.

 

“The Knights of the Vale saved us,” she said, “They deserve a reward.”

 

He let out a single harsh chuckle, “The Free Folk fought for us as well, what will they get? Arya? Why do you not marry one of them in your gratitude?”

 

A single tear rolled down her cheek, “You know why.” He glanced at her, and his eyes followed the path of the tear to where it pooled at her lips. She swiped it away and he flinched. “I have been married to a man before. A man who knew how to kill with more than a simple a word and the opening of a door. Robin is young, and weak and-“

 

“Mad,” Jon added. “I know you think you can control him, and perhaps you can, part of him anyway, but the other part, no one can. Not even himself.”

 

He was right, Robin was at least half-mad and prone to temper tantrums more befit for a toddler than a Lord.

 

“Aye, and I’d rather control one half of a boy than none of a grown man,” she reasoned, though she was unsure of whether she was trying to convince him or herself.

 

“Sansa I would never let anyone harm you again,” he told her, “I’ll protect you, I promise.”

 

“How?,” she argued, “You are not the Lord of Winterfell, you are not the King in the North, what my future husband does to me is none of your concern.”

 

“It is my _only_ concern!,” he growled back, “You think I care a whit for titles? For jurisdiction? Any man who dares harm you will meet his end at my hand and it’s not because I am your Lord or your King it’s because…”

 

“Say it,” she prompted him.

 

He glanced at her and he looked like the sad little boy he once was, looking up at her and her family sitting at the high table during feasts. Like everything he wanted was only just out of grasp.

 

But he was no longer a sad little boy, he was a man who fought for the things he wanted. And so he closed the distance between them and took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her, as though there had never been a single thing that he wanted more than her.

 

She had never been kissed like this, not once in her whole life. She had been kissed, too many times, by men who hurt her and sold her, but never by a man who loved her. Not for her name or her title but for herself, in spite of her name and title.

 

She melted against him and he folded her into his arms, their lips meeting in an urgent fashion that did nothing to obscure the tenderness of it.

 

She was not sure how long it lasted but by the time it was over she was breathless and so was he. Her mind was blank, but his, apparently was not.

 

“You are not marrying him,” he ordered her.

 

“And who are you to forbid it?,” she challenged in confusion.

 

“Your King,” he said, the deep tenor of his voice back again.

 

“You’d go back on your word?,” she wondered, “You’d take back the North.”

 

He shook his head, “No, she’d never allow the North its independence. So I’m going to have to take the Vale and the Crownlands and the Stormlands, I’ll have to take the Reach and the Riverlands and Dorne, the Iron Islands and the Westerlands.”

 

“You’ll announce your claim?,” she asked, fear piercing her heart, “Jon you’ll start a war!”

 

He grinned at her easily, as though they did not have the Night King to fear and two dragons, as though his every breath was not an act of treason.

 

“Isn’t that what Targaryen men do? Go to war for Stark women?”

**Author's Note:**

> ps that last line I definitely pulled from a gif set. I don't know who the creator/originator of that line is but if anyone does, please let me know and I will credit them!


End file.
